


The Caverns of the Grave I've Seen

by crocodilecogs



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Will Graham, Chilton Being an Asshole, Illness, Imprisonment, Insanity, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Post-Red Dragon, Red Dragon Spoilers, Slow Build, Vulnerable Hannibal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-07-29 08:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7677133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocodilecogs/pseuds/crocodilecogs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham discovers that the origins of Hannibal Lecter's cannibalism is rooted in something more sinister than anyone could have imagined. The longer Hannibal goes without consuming human tissue, the further his body decomposes into a Wendigo-like state. This is no more apparent than in prison, where he begins to deteriorate. To save Hannibal's life, Will may have to become an accomplice in his escape, and even future tableaus.</p><p>During and after the events of Red Dragon, the story is mildly AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Auguries of Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> First ever upload! I've always indulged myself in interactive, novel-format roleplaying, but I've recently decided to give fanfiction a try. In the process, I'm trying to trim my sentences to be more concise, as they tend to run a bit long and flowery, but isn't that an ideal format for Hannibal? I think yes.
> 
> I don't like zombies. But I had a concept I just couldn't ignore - what if Hannibal contracted a zombie-like virus as a young boy, perhaps directly after the events of his family's murder, and he cultivated his cannibalistic lifestyle as a result? I mostly wanted to explore how that might alter his dynamics with Will. I didn't want to disturb Bryan Fuller's interpretation of the events because what he created is a masterpiece, so I decided to alter the foundation a bit and take a new spin on things. Let's see how it goes!

****_“If I saw you everyday, forever, Will, I would remember this time.”_

The most intimate of things beckon Hannibal’s reminiscence. He remembers how Will stained the yellow Tuscan afternoon like a vivid blue brushstroke, how the promise of rainwater in the air wafted with Will’s aftershave. Always the sentimentalist, he would not upgrade the tacky scent to spite Hannibal, and surely also because he would recognize it. Of course he did. The scent trailed him through the catacombs, receded again like a wave over the parched shoreline, and reunited with him at the Uffizi Gallery, where Hannibal had waited.

Will always wore scuffs and scrapes like they belonged there, like a kintsugi vase with seams of gold where it had shattered once. That day he was an appropriate installation in the gallery, a work of art in his own right. Seated before Primavera together, Hannibal admired Botticelli’s astute recognition for how light and dark could coexist harmoniously; how exquisitely they always had. How they functioned like inhalations and exhalations - separately but interdependently.

Primavera foretold the coming of a reaper. The reaper, as he had always known him, did not wear Will Graham’s face, and so Hannibal had been disarmed when Will unsheathed the knife. Twice betrayed, but still alive.

The etches of Dr. Lecter’s brows deepened with a focused furrow as he struggled to summon the subject of his sketch from that day. Within the confines of his prison, memory was his liberation, his indulgence. But the ceiling of his Memory Palace had opened like the Pantheon, the dome’s watchful eye was corrosive, open to the onslaught of elements. It rained down on the marble floor, ivy clambered in, spreading angry and pestilent. The very foundation was fractured, the thorny veins spread by the hour. He gripped his pencil with restraint and inhaled deeply, reaching, searching -

Feebly he could grasp the Palazzo Vecchio, the 14th century edifice with her Gothic impressions. Somewhat asymmetrical was the imposing clock tower, looming high, but not so far out of the reach of his recall. Not yet. Trailing the charcoal to the face of the clock, Hannibal’s eyes opened to search his drafting paper. Each arched window had proper placement, the masonry was shaded with appropriate texture, the battlements precise.

The simplicity of a clockface does not evade him, and with measured certainty, he drafts it upon the tower.  


* * *

“Will,” Jack says firmly, so that Will feels like a peg he’s wedged perfectly in place. And he knows what will follow, because the edge of Jack’s voice is piqued with paternal concern. But it isn’t enough, it never is, and it’s so damned frivolous when he asks: “Are you sure about this?”

Will’s prepared to return to the thick of it, because he’s never left. His curiosity as arresting as his life’s very calling, this is where he finds himself again: at Hannibal Lecter’s door. Maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it always has been.

“You ask me out of courtesy. How far does that courtesy extend? I doubt it would see me out the door,” Will answers, and it is curt enough that Jack’s face is florid. They still smile at each other, Jack even chuckles, and it’s the same sort of sentiment as sitting on the rubble of your old house, and splitting open a beer.

“You’re right. I asked you to come. This investigation needs you.”

They’re sustaining themselves with coffee, because the prolific inmate keeps odd hours, and Will knows well how time eludes you inside a solitary cell. It’s not even 5 AM, but the corridor outside Hannibal’s confinement is probably as empty as it will still be at noon.

Will was in Baltimore before dinner last night, and he retired to the hotel early as Jack instructed, and fell into bed before finishing his charred tilapia, courtesy of room service. Sleep swept in before Molly’s call, and it was wondrously and fantastically deep, but brief for it. A frantic dream of Mrs. Leeds and the glowing hollows of her eyes. He stares for too long, and the man with antlers gazes back, and only a glimpse jars him awake too soon. Even still the dreams prey on his subconscious like a dormant virus, quiet and selective, but never vanquished.

“Will?” Jack’s closer suddenly, and Will inhales sharply. It’s the sort of intake of air that he hopes will ground him, but as soon as he exhales he feels that disquieting loss of stability set in. “Listen. Hannibal’s not - _Dr. Lecter’s_ -... he’s changed.”

Will observes as the turbulence in Jack’s eyes match the subtle inflections of his voice, so sincere it’s almost unnerving from Jack. Mid-sip of lukewarm dark roast, Will lowers the cup, imploring Jack’s eyes. Though staunch and resolute as he ever has been, Jack breaks their eye contact first. The silence is pressing, but he won’t elaborate without a prompt. Perhaps Will lets it go, perhaps the former fixation has left him disenchanted now.

“In the way prison changes someone? I find that hard to believe.” Will doesn’t disguise the scoff in his tone, and he fidgets, more eager now to enter. The added element of suspense does nothing for his unease.

“For one, he’s thinner,” explains Jack at some length, and Will can discern that this is awkward for him. He’s surprised he’s taken the initiative to warn Will at all, it’s uncharacteristically delicate of him. This isn’t customary, and Will knows this all too well. It isn’t every day one of Jack Crawford’s hounds develop such an emotional attachment for the hunted.

“No appetite?” Will asks darkly, with enough humor to snuff out the tension.

“Oh, no. His appetite is as ravenous as ever. He’s fed frequently, but can’t seem to sustain any energy from what he consumes. He’s had a low-grade fever for two months, and when he sleeps, he’s virtually comatose. Psychologically he maintains clarity most of the time, or seems to, and socially he is ever the self-proclaimed connoisseur of the arts… All but for brief instances of madness. We’ve done extensive lab work - nothing.”

“ _Instances_ of madness?” Will presses, with equal parts curiosity and incredulousness. Does Jack not ascertain, along with almost everyone else, that Hannibal Lecter has always been mad?

“You know what I mean,” Jack snips impatiently. “He compromises his equanimity, becomes vacant. Paces, doesn’t seem to hear anyone. Grows visibly agitated. Not often, just frequently enough that Frederick typed up a self-congratulatory analysis for the few times Hannibal’s allowed him to witness the behavioral disruptions.”

“Sounds like a perfect ruse to me,” speculates Will, whose eyes begin dart restlessly. And it’s clear to them both he’s _eager_ to see Hannibal, and no one would be more surprised at that than Will.

“Alright. I’ll be here, watching,” Jack indicates the surveillance screens at the end of the hall and concedes, swiping in the temporary key, programmed by the warden at Chilton’s own reluctant request. It’s no question Jack’s timing’s strategic, catching Dr. Lecter at his documented peak hours of activity, and Dr. Chilton’s own off the clock. It’s not a stretch of the imagination that this is by Hannibal’s design, also.

In and out, Will measures his breath again, and it’s of no relief. His chest is elated with the most peculiar sort of thrill, a flight response and a disquieting ache all at once. Heart spasming, he pushes the door to find it’s heavy, like the oak of a sanctuary’s steeped entryway, like the door to Hannibal’s office. Not nearly as heavy as the secured cell would be now, that glass partition that is barred to them both. Will shuts the door without a backward glance.

When he steps inside, he finds it’s quiet but for the slight cadence of an orchestra, surely a construct of his own vivid imagination. No, from Will’s angle there is a sleek record player with a jagged needle and a smooth vinyl, and it plays an aria Will can’t quite place. As he adjusts his glasses and peers deeper, he clears his throat to announce his presence, if his scent doesn’t betray him first. Through the glass initially there is only an illuminated drafting table and library, but all else is dim, an appropriately ominous cavern.

Transcending the shadows is a human shape, and Will’s eyes adjust to interpret the appropriate angular edges, dips and swells of the sleeping inhabitant. There is a glimmer of reflected light which bends in sharp contrast to the shadows of his face. Will finds he’s now a little more the wendigo of his fantasies than before, and maybe he is more at the core of himself. The elegant breadth of his forehead still peaks with the slopes of his distinct brows, though his eyes are more hollow, noticeably sunken. The cheekbones arch almost crudely with the onset of emaciation, but his lips are still as full, as sanguine as ever. Ravenous, as Jack had said. The word carves itself in Will’s skull.

“Dr. Lecter?” he tries, formally, because the intimacy of his first name might be too much in this moment. He approaches the glass, and he might consider tapping it if he didn’t, on some blighted level, revere its inhabitant too highly. It would feel too much like rousing a tiger sleeping in an exhibition. Jack had said he’d sleep persistently, but it wouldn’t have been the first time Hannibal bent the rules for Will.

As he’s not draped in a blanket, trace signs of his breathing are easier to detect, and it’s almost hypnotic to behold. He’s seen him like this once before, his hand joined with Abigail’s at her recovery bed in what was once a vulgar caricature of family, soured by her death (the first time). Now the memory is more bittersweet, like scrapbook contents floating in a flooded basement. Will reflects on the hindsight with painstaking clarity, the same way he perceives all things after the dense fog clears, a protective screen from stinging truths. Some of which are no easier to bear to this day.

No, he can’t so much as stir him, and he doesn’t try. It’s as if a separate friend exists in the subconscious sleeper, a more honest companion, and that company sounds appealing. He’s content to simply sit and wait it out, though the Tooth Fairy stirs by their omission each passing second. His conscience won’t let him forget it, and he’s glad for that, because in his yearning to be near Hannibal again, he might as well not have one at all.

Hannibal sleeps facing the glass longways, and when Will sits on the sofa, his reflection on the glass joins the prisoner in his cot. Will finds a small measure of humor in it, a welcome distraction from the brash throbbing in his chest. Maybe he’ll stand, he’ll pace away the hours if he’s got to, but he’s more inclined to do those things if Hannibal’s awake. Instead he defies his own self-preservation, perhaps foolishly, and adjusts himself so he slowly lays, too. The untouched coffee is deposited (respectively on a coaster) beside him.

Will lays overlapping Hannibal. Therefore _with_ Hannibal, in a sense. Their faces merge, and Will is illuminated like a white chalk outline over Hannibal’s shadows, softening all the blunt edges. They form a complete picture. Exhalations and inhalations sync, Hannibal’s chest expands a little more with the depth of his breathing. Will follows soon after.  


* * *

For drowsing so unintentionally, it’s a thick sleep. It’s not the muck of an insufficient nap, it’s sinking a little too far into water clear and pure as a baptismal bath. It’s surfacing for air right before you really need it, so closing your eyes an instant longer feels like far too long. Will’s certainly right about sleeping too long as he finds the cot across him vacant, pillow primly smoothed of any wrinkles that would suggest it had ever been occupied.

The lights are on, the music is off, and the doctor is dutifully at his table. Having perhaps shifted while stirring, or perhaps disrupting the cadence of his breathing, Hannibal knows when his esteemed visitor has woken before Will can gather his own bearings.

“Had I known to anticipate your visit, my housekeeping would have been a better reflection of that,” Hannibal does not lift his eyes from the charcoal poised between his steady fingers. He doesn’t need to.

“Are you… honestly apologizing on behalf of your hospitality… in prison?” asks his groggy visitor, at ease with such adeptness it catches him off guard. Their long separation is of no consequence to their manner of exchange, effortless and relaxed, and even the glass poses no true barrier. Will recalls how he fell asleep, and his chest tightens. Without a second thought he had acquiesced to the intimate longing, and worse still he knows it for what it is. It will be omitted as empathy, of course. He longs for Hannibal only because the reverse is true.

The doctor only smiles, a crinkle of affection at the corner of his eye. “I’m not one to rattle the bars, particularly after locking myself in. Meanwhile, I make the very most of my lofty accommodations.”

“Well, you’ve done better for yourself in jail than I did,” Will says, and he wants to be bitter, and he is, but the words leave him fondly. He’s clearly disarmed by the shedding layers of sleep, and reaches for his cool coffee.

“A robin red-breast in a cage puts all of Heaven in a rage,” recites Hannibal as he sets down his charcoal, and the time comes to greet his friend properly.

Both men rise to their feet almost in unison, and they approach the glass, and their eyes lock with lurid nostalgia. It’s been an age, and yet it’s been only yesterday in a sense, and to them both, there is something vaporous and surreal about seeing the other. In Will, Hannibal finds a man who has abandoned his own metamorphosis, as though emerged from a time capsule. He is content, but that contentedness will not quell his longing, his redemption will not satiate the thirsts of his soul. He’s come to take another hearty bite.

It’s not much extensive searching on Will’s part that yields what Hannibal craves most. He is, quite literally, starved of it. Both of them, ravenous.

Will slips off his glasses.

“I imagine you already know this isn’t a question I need answered,” Hannibal inserts, testing the precarious balance between being means to an end, or more ideally, just an end. “But why have you come?”

“How long have you been ill?” Will asks instead, much to his own astonishment.

“That is not why you’ve come,” Hannibal resolves, he’s hopeful he could be wrong. But lackadaisically, because he so rarely is.

“No. It isn’t. I had no way of knowing.”

“It’s hardly necessary to explain yourself, Will. That you inquire with concern for my state does not go unnoticed.”

“I’m here about the -... well, he’s called the Tooth Fairy,” Will says quickly, in knee-jerk retaliation to Hannibal Lecter’s insufferable ego. Conversely, he won’t insult Hannibal’s intelligence by tip-toeing around the topic. “I’m sure you’ve been following the case.”

“Of course. It’s become Frederick’s most valued tool of invalidation,” replies the doctor with smoothed hackles of agitation, and Will knows Dr. Chilton isn’t the source of it. Not solely, anyway, because Chilton’s favor would have been an insult. No, that Will Graham’s visit would have no other basis but for the serial killer in the media’s crosshair, like a prized moth pinned in a display case beside him. Hannibal’s wings lose their vibrancy to fresher colors, and it was never so apparent before now.

Has Will come to spring the bait on him, too? It will not be so simple.

“Surely, you know serial killers do not congregate in anonymity, form alliances and exchange creative DIY’s on concealing the odor of body decomposition. I would have liked that once,” his irises are glinting, maroon and taunting. “It didn’t quite work out.”

“So you wouldn’t be his friend?” Will’s brows raise and pinch in the center with conciliatory amusement. He doesn’t look directly in his eyes, not anymore, because he’s not as calm as he wants to be. He never is, but now it’s especially true, because Hannibal insists on breaching into personal territory too soon. He cannot entertain it, and he certainly cannot invite it.

“I might be his mentor,” Hannibal says with such honest phrasing it tickles him, but in a tone that implies consideration. The truth of it is lost on Will, and it is designed to be.

“I’d hope not,” he says through an exhale, a bitter little smirk curving the corner of his lips.

“My friendship is reserved for connections with more substance.”

Will is already frustrated, his nerves prickle with it, the notch in his throat jostles when he swallows suddenly. _Stay focused. Stay on topic._ How can he? As  humanity looks to divinity to fill the eroded void, Will Graham looks to Hannibal Lecter. In all this time, that’s unchanged. It’s a trap, after all, just a construct by the robin to disrupt heaven’s tranquility. It imprisons them both. Hannibal knows this full well.

“Will,” his voice expands the shelter of Will’s silence, an invasion of his barriers. He’s closer to the glass, his temple nearly touching, as if his thoughts hadn’t already effectively permeated the empath’s own mind. “Have you thought of me often?”

“I don’t really think of you.” It’s such a feeble lie, he knows Hannibal won’t believe it. He’s not really meant to, but Will needs the reigns on his investigative efforts. “Look, I’ve already told you why I’ve come. Your insight would be an asset to this case.”

“I have a gift I would like you to accept first,” he negates the issue at hand in a manner that is as close to impudent as Hannibal Lecter will ever get.

“I’d rather not accept it.”

“Come now, if I have vacated your mind entirely, allow me to rekindle fonder memories.” The doctor turns, and Will notices how even in his starved frame, he is no less broad at the shoulders or formidable in height. He is the wendigo but for the horns or the charcoal black, except perhaps his fingers. They’re streaked from the endeavors he’s taken to the table, where he returns now. Admiring and scrutinizing his work in equal measure, he implores the page for what might be lacking, what could be better accentuated before relinquishing it into the possession of its intended recipient. “I had intended to mail it, but fate designed an alternative.”

“You knew I would be coming.” It’s not mere speculation. Fate is always means to a more favorable outcome when you can outwit the stars.

Hannibal doesn’t confirm one way or another. He goes to rinse and dry his hands before handling the paper. “It’s likely to smudge. I am not permitted to have a fixative spray.” To keep his work pristine, he applies a blank sheet over the sketch before rolling them in tight cylinder. As he approaches, Will props his glasses back on. He would benefit to comply, but it’s ever at the expense of his own stability. When Hannibal slides the parcel through the hole in the glass, it is reluctantly accepted and unraveled.

What he finds there does rekindle a memory, but it is certainly not a fond one. Will is repulsed, and there is an angry little pit of fire in his chest, and it’s just as Hannibal wants, he’s certain of that. The derision in the piece is palpable, and he can make more sense of its intended mockery than anything else.

“For you, this is crass,” he almost snarls, his hands quivering as he grapples with what to do with it. He resolves to return it, rather than to toss it from his sight, as reflex might have had him do instead. “And I don’t want it.”

Now, it’s Hannibal’s turn to be alarmed, though he conveys it with the mastered subtly of a chameleon. What’s unexpected is the pain he finds there, clear bewilderment that has ventured beyond his composure. Hannibal doesn’t make any motions to speak, but he is genuinely offended, and this confounds Will. Surely this gift was bestowed to him in crude mockery. How else is he to interpret it?

What he finds on the page are angular shapes in frantic disarray, a nonsensical, haphazard structure. Appropriate for dabbling in abstractism, certainly, and only effective in conveying a memory that could only torment Will. In the corner, there’s the anatomical anomaly of a clock. The numbers collapse off to the side, the short and long hands join them in the pile.

“You can’t possibly - … What do you mean by giving this to me?” he asks through his teeth, averts his eyes and leans in so his strained voice can fall to a whisper.

“The Palazzo Vecchio. In Florence,” Hannibal explains abruptly, deeming the explanation futile. The depiction speaks for itself, certainly. His posture has become more rigid, a stance which means to contain the floodgates, because he is almost visibly upset. “After we left the gallery together, -”

“Hannibal. Is that… is that what you see when you look at this?” Will asks, less callously now, but he is firm so as not to be susceptible to manipulation. Hannibal stiffly refrains from responding, irises flickering with a sharpness.

As Will implores his face, the answer is clear. Heart plunging to his stomach, ice surging through his veins, he is disgusted by his own volition to give a damn. He aches impossibly, but only rubs his mouth, and manages a hoarse apology. “I just haven’t been sleeping well. But it isn’t really a good memory, is it? Chiyo sniped me around the corner.”

Hannibal only speculatively folds his hands behind his back. Will imagines he’s wishing now he had a more venomous gift to exchange for his belligerent ingratitude.

“I really am - …” Sorry. Aren’t they past that? “I have to go. If I’m not going to find answers with you, I have no reason to stay.”

The empath’s receding footsteps, urgently en route to the door, would undoubtedly rouse the prisoner’s cooperation. They both knew it, as Hannibal had no reason to believe Will would return. Will isn’t even nearly finished with him, and especially not now, not after this development. The state of this mysterious illness calls for more pressing examination, and he has that proof now.

It may all be an elaborate ruse. It’s a risk he’s willing to take.

“When I said I might mentor your killer, I did in fact mean it,” says the doctor beguilingly to the shadows, just as his visitor disappears, poised to push through the oak doors. He turns away, too, feigning nonchalance better than he could pretend he was not wounded moments ago. “I do. We exchange letters. The title of Tooth Fairy does not suit his tastes, and in fact the sensationalism only fuels the fire.”

“You  _speak_ with him?” Will is appropriately stunned, or as much as his constitution will allow.

“If you’d like to know more, you will have to return when I am feeling more sociable. Perhaps after I’ve eaten. Until then.”


	2. Infant Sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frederick Chilton wishes to better understand his patient, Hannibal Lecter, but the rare gift Hannibal bestows upon him may be more than Frederick's bargained for. Will discovers Bedelia's secret past in order to access her confidential files on Hannibal to better understand his mysterious illness. Hannibal has been admitted to the hospital where Will visits him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline is important to keep in mind, since this is a story that operates within a very intricate plotline already. Chapter 1 was set in S3, when Will first recruits Hannibal’s help in catching Dolarhyde. Act one of this chapter, with Hannibal and Chilton interacting, skips ahead to S3’s ‘The Number of the Beast is 666’, and reworks the scene where Chilton confronts Hannibal about his article. Also, it is Freddie Lounds, not Chilton, who Dolarhyde mutilates instead (like in the book), as will be further elaborated on in Act two. Act two of this chapter leaps ahead to ‘The Wrath of the Lamb’. Know that much of S3 is still perfectly in tact, just reworked a little here and there, in ways that must be tweaked for the perfect conclusion to this work. I apologize in advance for any confusion.

****“ _… For the insane to go undiagnosed is a dilemma for the human conscience. Those with morality seek to fundamentally separate themselves from Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and even those guilty of lesser crimes. This is done by seeking resolutions. Without answers, this leaves humanity at a quandary beyond the very measure of psychiatry, a territory we dare not breach without a deeper explanation: is Hannibal Lecter pure evil?”_

Pausing after the passage, the book is sealed with some force, intended to jostle Dr. Frederick Chilton’s audience. Unsuccessfully, of course, because his audience (and subject) is a man of formidable constitution. Hannibal’s irises are maroon as they reflect a shaft of light from inside his exhibition, Frederick notices, with the most subtle shift in expression. So far as he can tell beneath the absurd mask, anyway, an additional restraint measure to join the newfound straitjacket. This dehumanization makes him ever more susceptible to Frederick’s gloating.

“I go on to write a compelling case for why you’re not, and you _refute_ me in the Northern Medical Journal of Psychiatry.”

Humiliation suits Frederick like a Persian rug streaked in wine, and Hannibal is fond of the blood that rises to his ears. He stops pacing long enough to approach Hannibal admonishingly. The menagerie glass is open today, so all that separates prisoner and warden are his bindings. He’s to be transported on that obscene dolly in an hour to Johns Hopkins for more testing, and a likely transfusion.

“You contradicted me at your own expense. You fell into a trap by doing just that. Insane or evil - the world isn’t inclined to reach any other conclusion! You deny you’re insane. That was the more merciful stance I took. Now, all that’s left is -”

“Your narrative was hardly merciful,” dismisses Hannibal, still glinting within the sunken hollows of his eyes. Chilton strains to hear him. In the passing weeks, the ailment has compromised much of his strength. The mask does little to project his fading voice, hoarse as withered burrs.

“Well, well. _You_ are mistaken. Shall I read it again?”

“It might be an effective sedative, if you mean to transport me while I’m unconscious,” he whispers.

Hannibal has never been known to engage Chilton with any true substance, neither to coerce or encourage. He does not confess that he would be willingly martyred before permitting these inaccuracies of his psychiatric profile. A savory dish for a refined palette, he cannot allow for his mind be minced and served with neutralizing flavors to satiate the consensus. If he was to be digested at all, he would be presented as authentic cuisine. To repulse some, to entice others. To acquire, eventually, the favor of _one_ in particular.

“Your position has no leverage. Not when your articles were published. Certainly not _now_ ,” he jeers, and circles him in a predatory fashion, encroaching on the bait. “Just look at you. Too fragile to survive prison.”

Closing his eyes, Hannibal almost visibly bristles in his restraints.

“You are shriveled and pitiful, more creature than man, _lesser_ than man. You tell your secrets in your feverish sleep. You speak to the dead. I’ve heard what you would whisper in Abigail Hobbs’s ear. In _Mischa’s_.”

There is a lengthy pause, a seeming lapse in time where his patient appears to delve beyond beyond the reach of Frederick’s torment, who does briefly regret the lengths he’s gone this time. It’s unethical. Beyond that, it’s unnerving, the way Hannibal’s breathing rattles like moth wings are clearing out of his trachea. If Frederick were to listen closely enough, he’d find the pace is quickened with a misplaced elation.

“Why confide in the dead? The living still have much to learn about you.”

Frederick is lurking close, and his tacky scent is like a thin lacquer glazing over a dull and tarnished thing. Much like him, adorned in all the bells and whistles to distract the eye from his mediocrity.

“I read your assessment on me. All 237 pages,” recounts Hannibal under his breath. The precise recollection of pages is almost has Chilton peening. A writhing worm is punctured on the hook, the line is extended. “When you are prepared to truly listen, Frederick, I can offer you more than that.”

“How auspicious and unlikely, Dr. Lecter,” counters Chilton dubiously. Contrarily he remains close, attentive. The reel is spinning.

“Unlikely, perhaps. My affliction inhibits my speech enough without this mask. You can only hear as well as I can speak, which is not well, in either case.” His voice falters with a shuddered exhale, rattling like windswept husks in a tomb.

“I do seek to understand. As does the world. All that is required of you is to trust. To confide in me.”

Not so unlike a romantic proposition, a palpable magnetism is kindled between doctor and patient. They lurch for their respective forms of intimacy. Frederick is compliant, almost pliable, in all his yearning to explore the palace of Hannibal Lecter’s impenetrable mind. From the carcasses in their crypts to cobwebbed nooks and crannies. Where there be dragons, treasure is sure to be unearthed.

“My mortality may be upon me, and I have much left to say. I may require your ear. Perhaps water, first.”

“Of course - yes.”

He goes to fill a glass with such remarkable expediency he might be mistaken for generous, or even valiant, by anyone who does not know Frederick. The sink outside the cell yields the clearest tap, and it expands over the brim in his earnestness. His fingers are wet with it, a droplet streak dampens his cuff. Hannibal watches with some precariousness, as though Frederick might be inclined to mock him by serving vinegar instead.

“Your trust in me is not misguided, Dr. Lecter. Neither will it go unrewarded. If you are close to death, as you say, then let the world see your true face… and liberation will come. Confide in me the things you would like others to know. Allow me to tell your true story.”

The mask is lifted. The air he breathes is more refreshing for it, though each shallow cycle of breath comes in labored currents. With a sallow complexion and sunken cheeks, the mask may have been more complimentary than his true face, Frederick thinks, and he is not subtle about it. Not subtle enough for Hannibal Lecter, anyway.

His dry lips almost crackle when they part to accept the cup. Frederick angles it cautiously, guiding the side of his patient’s face to the drink. Relief comes after a sharp twinge. Hannibal’s eyelids shudder as the only indication the chafing in his mouth is so severe the cold exacerbates the pain. He drinks knowing it will have no effect.

“You ache to understand. But how badly?” Hannibal whispers with considerable effort, but he will not exchange eloquence for ease of speech, regardless. “Do be warned. This information will change you.”

Frederick almost scoffs. He tips more water into Hannibal’s mouth. “I am hardly delicate.”

“That is soon to be determined,” he replies, softer than before, a hollow whisper without the influence of much voice. What comes next is almost entirely inaudible. Frederick lowers the glass, and in his struggle to properly listen, he closes in.

“Please repeat that, Dr. Lecter.”

How fervently Frederick’s pulse flourishes as his greed peaks. Hannibal watches the throbbing in his neck, his gaze trails the circuit of bloodrush to the veins in his ear. It anticipates, hungry as Hannibal’s own awaiting mouth. He lurches, abrupt as a dagger lashing, and every ounce as painful, as consequential. The starved cannibal takes an indulgent mouthful of ear that comes off only as cleanly as Frederick allows.

Not very cleanly at all in his struggle, as it turns out: Hannibal pilfers a patch of scalp and a generous strip of succulent cheek. Together they are lavished in an eruption of blood, delightfully dousing the prisoner as he gnashes through cartilage. Frederick is screaming condemnations, contributing to the crescendo that swells exquisitely within Hannibal’s skull. Cowering, the wounded man reaches for the glass partition, streaking the clear screen in his frantic hand prints as he leaves. The water now dazzles the stained floor with its shattered cup.

“Why - why… Why - …!” In his disbelief, he ironically pleads for the very same resolution outlined in his excerpt. _Why?_

“Now, Doctor,” begins the prisoner with restored clarity, voice perfectly discernible (but for the accent, some might argue), some color restored to his face. “You were certain enough of ‘why’ to publish 237 pages on the subject. The more appropriate question is _what?_ \- and not simply because you are harder of hearing now than before. I have bestowed a gracious gift upon you. The gift of understanding me. You would never have achieved that just by listening… which you never did very well.”

* * *

 

“Thank you for bringing these.”

Will Graham meets Bedelia Du Maurier outside of the hospital alone, as he has conducted most things in this investigation. The things which involve Hannibal, anyway; and that includes almost everything now that he’s actively spoken with, and even colluded with Dolarhyde. Akin to a blot of ink in water, he unfurls in whatever he touches like a slow dancer, and cannot be separated. The clarity is always smokier for it. Once Hannibal learned of Will’s family, they drowned in the muddled blur, too.

Will can grieve for clarity - and he does - but he has never won a case with it.

“You might instead consider that I am taking the path of least resistance when faced with an ambush,” responds Bedelia with that voice like velour. She extends a file out to him, bible-thick, presented in a leather binder. Streaks of rain fuse on their umbrellas, thickly trickling between them, soaking the courtyard of Johns Hopkins. Bedelia is in an ivory jacket, double-breasted, a stark contrast to Will’s charcoals and royal blues, not unlike reaper and seraph. Two unwelcome guests at any hospital.

“I’m sorry, Bedelia. You have answers. You know Hannibal’s history,” Will feels a bitter little notch in his throat that warrants hesitation, “better than anyone. So to know his secrets, I had to learn yours, because yours was easier to access, frankly.”

Combining research with his empathic gift, Will had recently intruded on Bedelia’s most closely guarded secret, and confronted her accordingly. A secret that blurs the covetous barrier which once distinguished her morality from Hannibal’s. Will learned that Bedelia, too, is a murderer. She abhors him for it, and is not subtle about it. Since Will has known her, her eyes beckoned out like signals of distress. Now they are fervent beacons that would engulf and annihilate him. Even so, help will never come.

“So you choose to hold me hostage for assistance I would never offer you of my own volition. Just like Hannibal.”

It is not a comparison he accepts with relish, nor should he. Even from prison, brittle as a cracked egg, Hannibal still tugs his marionettes to compose elaborate skeleton dances. The shift of Dolarhyde’s focus from Hannibal to Will. Molly’s near-miss with Dolarhyde. Her inevitable rejection. Or perhaps he will reject her, though with all the fortitude left inside him he will not yet accept that outcome.

“And again in Hannibal’s image,” she continues, “you’ve devised your own pawns. Freddie Lounds comes to mind.”

During Chilton’s hospitalization, while he lay in recovering from the savage extraction of his ear, Lounds circled him like a hawk. Though her visits were impermissible by the hospital staff, she eluded them per the FBI’s instruction. Together, they connived with Freddie Lounds to sensationalize an exclusive on Chilton, who had already drawn the steady eye of the press after Lecter’s assault; but it was the dragon’s eye they intended to lure. Chilton had agreed to belligerently insult, rather than to properly assess Dolarhyde. It had been Will’s own design, to ensnare Dolarhyde using his own self loathing as a noose.

Will had anticipated luring the dragon out with bait. In his recovery ward, Chilton was inaccessible. Ultimately not his first choice, Lounds had been massacred beyond recognition, instead.

“Freddie Lounds was Dolarhyde’s victim,” Will states stiffly, and he convinces neither of them. Bedelia preys a moment on the silence that endures between them before moving on.

“I don’t need to tell you that you are holding very sensitive material,” she says at length, and their umbrellas touch as she nears him to say, with formidable intensity: “No one must know.”

Bedelia has lost her balance. Her destiny now teeter-totters on a set of scales, from Dr. Lecter’s palms to Will Graham’s. Left with a solitary leg with which to teeter on, her chase is in suspension. Just like before, but now it is Will with the leverage. She turns, and she leaves with what little is left of her own will. Without watching her go, he pushes back through the hospital doors.

Hospital stench has saturated his wool coat for as transient as Will has been from ward to ward in these past weeks. Hannibal was taken in immediately following Chilton’s incident for testing, and both are within a day of release (in a manner of speaking). Hannibal, Dr. Chilton, Lounds, Reba… Molly. The past week had accumulated more hospitalization than what Hannibal left on his escape to Italy.

Approaching Hannibal’s room, Will shows his badge to the nurse as enthusiastically as spouses greet one another after 50 years; he’s simply here too often for his status to be questioned anymore. He expects to find the doctor sedated, as is customary. His ferocity has the sort of notoriety among the staff as anyone would expect. The harrowing mask is always on, a feeding tube wired beneath it. The bed has guards erected at either side of his arms, which are bound there. He kindly engages anyone who cares to inspire amicable conversation with him, and there is a nurse or two among the staff who read to him. They listen as he analyzes the literature, sharing insight with patience and delicate humor. Will observes this once or twice when he appears to have dozed off, and it’s always a challenge not to smile.

Today Hannibal’s in a medicated sleep, his coloring noticeably enriched, his face fuller, less drastic angles and shadows. This suits his objective to research uninterrupted, anyway (though he could just as easily retire to his hotel). Will sits at his usual place, the legs of his chair lightly scraping as he shifts closer. He props the file up on the bed, slightly angled against Hannibal’s torso. The material goes rhythmically up and down with his breathing cycle, faintly audible against the mask. It grants Will some much-needed peace.

While all the world would draw boundaries between themselves and Hannibal, Will draws some comfort to be reminded how human he is.

Or perhaps that still remains to be seen. When Will opens the binder, an assortment of psychiatric notes and articles splay out. Will’s pulse is thrumming with avid trepidation, there’s a tremor throughout his hands as he sifts through the documentation. Soon enough he’s so absorbed in the material, he’s transported by it.

He lurks like a teleporter at a session between Bedelia and Hannibal, the transcript plays out for him like a film reel, blurred and darkened at the edges. They are in Florence, in the penthouse hideaway, lavished in fineries Will can appreciate the vivid details now. Another credit to Hannibal’s influence.

“If you wish to interpret the world in the purest sense… You _taste_ it _,_ ” Bedelia’s voice drifts in, dreamy and strangely submerged. “According to Freud. Do you see yourself as pure, Hannibal? Purer than the rest of us?”

“Some would remark that what I am - what I must do - defiles the essence of my purity,” Hannibal says without contemplation. “But that would nullify purity’s very definition.”

“What you _must_ do,” she repeats languidly. “That phrasing implies desperation. It does not suggest that you are the master of your own choices.”

“I wasn’t, once upon a time. I had only to rebuild a life from the fragments. Left with the choice to die with my mother, my father. Mischa. I chose the life that was left. And I mastered that life. And into the dangerous world I leapt.”

“And so your choice was reduced to cannibalism, or your own fatality. But what would you choose now, if losing your life was of no consequence?” she asks, and her curiosity is visibly roused beyond the constraints of her impartial role. There is luster in her eyes, sympathy and humanity she is prepared to offer him should his response satisfy her.

“This is who I am,” he answers instead. He raises his chin satisfactorily, his chest swells with a breath, and he almost smiles. Then he seems to look directly at Will.

The transcript is pushed aside, the scene dispels like film in acid. Will is left to urgently sift through the pages, to find a conclusive basis for their conversation. Could it be as simple as Hannibal _believing_ he had to consume human flesh and organs to survive? But if that were so, how has he sunk so deeply into a state that has stumped his physicians? Diagnosed as severely anemic, the transfusion appeared to be of some relief. Enough to return him to his cell.

Was it the transfusion that restored him… Or did the ear he cleaved off of Frederick Chilton satiate him?

His speculation is supported by more concrete evidence the further he delves into Bedelia’s compilation. There’s a stack of grainy news article scans, with slanted Lithuanian headlines and warped photos. One article features the Lecter estate. Additional photocopies and clips include graphic depictions of a boy savagely taking a mouthful of an elderly woman’s arm, a row of quarantined patients thrashing wildly in their restraints. Finally, a pile of corpses sharing a pyre. Though scripted in Hannibal’s native tongue, the sequence of articles, arranged by date, effectively narrate the morbid tale: a devastating pathogen that was contained to the region by exterminating the infected.

The headlines frequently share the words _Maras Exodus_ , or _Maras X_ . Consulting his phone, Will translates _Plague Exodus_. His internet search yields few results.

“All that research… Tsk. Mr, Graham, when do you ever find time to sleep?”

The nurse’s voice jostles Will out of his skin, and he scrambles to shut the binder. She smiles apologetically, but he’s still worlds away as she moves in front of him. Dutifully tending to her patient, she disregards startling him so as not to embarrass him. He recognizes her as the young nurse who read Hannibal from her university texts, imploring him for guidance. She radiates a perceptive and tolerant energy, the sort he doesn’t interact with often in his judicial line of work.

“Between cases,” he replies with a fidgety sort of humor. “You haven’t come to dope him up more, have you?”

“No. Dr. Lecter’s had more than his fair share,” she chuckles effervescently, and he can’t help but to find her strange, light and florid as bubbles in his bleak world. What it must be like to walk in on all of this, to leave it all behind as you swipe your employee card, refreshed as soon as you’re out the doors. Will supposes that’s what marrying Molly felt like for a minute.

“You can say that again,” Will wrings his hands after tucking the file under his seat, overworked cartilage crackling. “Dr. Chilton’s ear is a cautionary tale, but there’s not much damage he could do in those restraints. The clockwork sedative might be overkill.”

“He’s dangerous, the hospital was weary of taking him. It’s helpful for certain tasks… ” she explains, nearly flinching when she removes the mask. Hannibal doesn’t stir from the disruption. “Like that.”

“Any idea when he might wake up?”

The nurse pauses to consult her chart, then proceeds to make note of his vitals. “He hasn’t had a dosage in a while. Any time now. When you do, Doctor, we’ll remove the Nasogastric tube and you’ll be on your way.” Her smile lingers briefly on Will, and then Hannibal’s the oblivious recipient, before she exits the room and its stale air.

“I thought she would never leave,” Hannibal recites the cliché with just a trace of grogginess, his eyes not yet open. The sensation overloads with his focus so compromised, dulling his sharpness, diluting his potency. He despises succumbing to this undignified state, electing to speak only when he is sure he can govern with clarity and conciseness.

Will doesn’t divulge of his findings. What moral certainty he once had has spun off its axis. It may be unfounded, it may be just as Hannibal said in the transcript. Circumstances be damned, he had cultivated a cannibal’s identity down to the marrow. But if it’s now between protecting strangers, or saving the life of a friend… A life so entangled in his own, Will cannot refute they are a conjoined house sharing one soul. He cannot, though he still tries.

“You look better,” Will observes lamely, shifting from his chair to the edge of the unforgiving mattress, right where he’d propped the binder moments ago. They look at one another as they have done before, enough times to be intricately embossed on their skulls. It’s different now, respectively, as Hannibal’s waking vision is like peering through a beveled lens, slicing Will cleanly into shards. Will beholds Hannibal in a more sympathetic light, his resentment challenged, because he cannot help but to understand so well. Too well.

“Then my looks deceive me, and may be guilty of my greatest deceit yet,” Hannibal answers with authentic sorrow, but he exemplifies the same elegance in dying as a Pharaoh. “And I’m afraid I have an intolerable itch I am powerless to scratch.”

“You’re starving, and Dr. Chilton’s ear wasn’t appetizing enough? I can’t imagine.”

“Alas, you mistake my meaning. My cheek itches.” Hannibal’s fingers curl in their bindings, and he elongates his neck with some strain to try and shift into the pillow, but the tube has little give, and retaliates with a wince of discomfort. He is graceless as a fractured bird, struggling to reclaim his deftness of flight.

Will almost smirks, and a gentleness and ease prevails through his inhibitions. A glimpse of Will’s true face. He regards him in a similar manner as his beloved fleet of dogs, and Hannibal is at once beguiled and conflicted. His pride may consequently suffer for it, but the adulation in his chest is an exchange he would not decline. The conflict is all but obliterated when Will hovers closer, and he demonstrates such reckless abandon by poising his fingers within reach of of Hannibal’s cheek.

“Here?” he asks, as much for guidance as permission. It’s absurd, this much he knows, dangling a hooked worm over the mouth of a famished bass. Maybe that’s the point.

Hannibal tilts his face into the imploring touch, though he hasn’t far to go.

“Down, please - yes.”

The offender is a scattered eyelash. Will presses his thumb there and drags the wisp away, and he strokes the tip of his nail there. A breath away from his mouth, an instrument legendary for its poetic eloquence and brutality, in equal measure. Which will he choose for Will? If he is generous, he may bestow both upon him, for what inspiration could Hannibal stir inside Will without feral consequences?

Will’s breath hitches with an excited intake, in spite of himself, as Hannibal turns his lips to the pad of Will’s thumb. A kiss is bestowed there, soft as a whisper, only distinct enough to express his affection. It lingers for another breath, shaky on Will’s part, because he is curious what will happen if Hannibal is thoroughly undone by his own primal temptations. He lingers because the ache of absolving this intimacy may crush him.

As it would turn out, it is Hannibal who deepens the interaction just enough to briskly brush Will’s thumb with teeth and tongue, only to ultimately recoil. In this light, his irises are like the Red Sea, the very shade of brown one might imagine with such a magnificent volume of blood. Will’s own are fresh as the rain that would wash it clear again, but not before mingling a while to lose itself. To blur.

“Hannibal. Jack and I have a plan. A plan to lure Dolarhyde - no, he’s not dead, as it turns out.”

Hannibal reclines in a manner that denotes frank disinterest, his lips still ringing from the engulfing thrill of his touch.

“I did gather that.”

“We alert the media of your transfer from the hospital back to the facility. The media covers the van transporting you, model, make and license all inclusive in the shot. He’s going to be watching.”

Hannibal regards Will silently, the subtext of his proposal is clear: Hannibal will not be returning to the facility. They both know it.

“I will consider it. But first… Would it kill you to say ‘please’?”


End file.
